Quote from: GnomeWorks;645226...which?

THE PH, DMG and MM. First Edition. And not for the tables, cartoons and bits of rules here and there. Not a quote here and there you post to prove a point on the forum afterwards with a stolen sense of achievement because you were "clever" enough to find it. I mean read it. The actual full text. Cover to cover. At your own pace, preferably in an environment where you can think about what the words on the page actually mean.

Quote from: Benoist;645228THE PH, DMG and MM. First Edition.

I don't actually own any 1e books, never have. I sold all the rest of my D&D books awhile back (to pay rent) aside from my 4e core books because I didn't anticipate I would actually be able to sell them, but those are off in a corner somewhere gathering dust.

I just wanted you to clarify, since talking about the "PH, DMG, and MM" is pretty vague, since many editions have them (and in some cases, multiple versions of them).

Quote from: Benoist;645222It is. Read your PH, DMG and MM.

There's a difference between teaching and stating. Here's stating:

"The introductory notes to the ODE explain that /ˈlɪt(ə)l/ means that the second syllable can be a syllabic /l/ or /əl/. It would be a very odd language that permitted a syllable to end in [tl] with a non-syllabic [l]. Actually, to my ears /lɪtəl/ sounds like what a 4-year-old would say, but no doubt someone here will swear they've always used it!"

Teaching requires something more. Period.

And if the vast majority of your audience didn't get it — it's your fucking fault.

The onus is on the writer. Period.

It could have been done better.

(And all this "it was really there, people just didn't take the time to plumb the books and really understand them" is crazy. OS D&D is trumpeted at "5 minutes to create" and "5-15 minute combats!" Fast playing is a selling point. Well, guys, if fast play is a selling point, telling people they need to read and grok 3 manuals to understand the very basics of play is insane. There should have been 1 or two paragraphs, right up front, that stated it clearly, and in basic English. (Or French. Depending.) )

(Last point — complaining about people not getting it misses the point. People didn't get it. So either teach it, or write a new clone that does. Bitching about how they should have gotten it back in 1979 is worse than useless. If you love it, teach it.)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645221The expectation that a novice player — who's never picked up the game before — can and should read the DMG and grok from it the playstyle you're advocating for is mistaken.

It is, yes. Except I never implied this, but rather implied the reverse, talking about it as the "ADVANCED" game. Look. That word. It means something. It's there for a reason. These books are not supposed to be the introduction to the game. At the time, that's the function OD&D, revised to form the Holmes rules set, was fulfilling.

OD&D being what it is, aimed at a specific wargaming audience with lots of bits and pieces implied or left out with the implication of house ruling that was part of the experience, when the game became popular there was a necessity to revise it to make it more approachable to broader audiences. That's what became the Holmes rules set. Now you can be critical of the approach J. Eric Holmes took with that boxed set, but all in all it is a pretty good introduction to the Dungeons & Dragons game, with the expectation that you will then move on to the ADVANCED game, with a content that will then make much more sense in context.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645233It could have been done better.

"It could have been done better" is not the same thing as "it isn't there." We can debate whether the ADVANCED books could have been done better. Honestly, I don't care much for that because I am satisfied with them, I like the prose, I like the dialog from one DM to another, I like a book that makes you think and take responsibility for your own game. But the notion that the exploration of dungeon and wilderness, the focus on the campaign milieu to explore isn't explained within the pages of the books, and advice provided for the players in the PH that explicitly talk about cleverness and preparations and the like, it's just flat-out wrong. It's there. If you care to take your eye off the rules and tables and read them.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645233(Last point — complaining about people not getting it misses the point. People didn't get it. So either teach it, or write a new clone that does. Bitching about how they should have gotten it back in 1979 is worse than useless. If you love it, teach it.)

Check my advice to build the mega-dungeon in my sig. This is going to be completed and shared outside of forums later on. In the meantime, I am working with Ernie Gygax to publish the dungeon that was run in the Dungeon Hobby Shop of TSR in Lake Geneva from 1977/78 on.

I have no ambition to publish yet-another-clone. If I did publish a game using the OGL, it would take the game in a different direction, kind of like games like AS&SH and others do, but probably as a supplement rather than a full game, because I don't see the need to restate with yet-another-game what's already there for people with eyes to see and actually read. Who knows. Maybe I'll change my mind on this. But that's not in the cards for me right now.

Speaking of which, I should get back to work. Thanks.

Quote from: Benoist;645235It's there.

I'll conceded the point. It doesn't matter.

The distinction between "it isn't there" and "it is there, but it's so deeply buried most people never got the idea" isn't one worth fighting over.

Why? Because the evidence is that the games didn't teach the play style. The vast majority of players didn't play that way, so it might as well have been missing.

And even if it was there, and everybody had gotten it, how long has it been missing?

Isn't that the primary impetus behind the OSR? "Nobody does Old School anymore!"

Okay, fine, you've resurrected the rules. Now do better.

Resurrect the play style.

If people love that play style, they need start teaching the play style. In person, in demo games, in RPG's or supplements they write.

• A two book, well-done dungeon written to be OS compatible, with the player booklet teaching the style and the DMG teaching how to run it.

Boom!

• A short rulebook on dungeoneering, a "universal" supplement for most popular OS systems, teaching the play style. With advice on "getting beyond combat."

Yeah. Like that.

If you love it, teach it. That's my suggestion, at least.

Quote from: Benoist;645234Now you can be critical of the approach J. Eric Holmes took with that boxed set, but all in all it is a pretty good introduction to the Dungeons & Dragons game, with the expectation that you will then move on to the ADVANCED game, with a content that will then make much more sense in context.

I learned D&D from the Holmes set. Or rather, I was introduced to the D&D by the Holmes set, then learned how to actually play (badly) from my friend's brother. As an instructional manual, the Holmes rules set is terrible.

The best things about the Holmes set were the sample dungeon (the Tower of Zenopus) and B1 In Search of the Unknown. And drawing on those as examples of how to play, D&D was evidently very much about a DM drawing a dungeon map, stocking it with cool monsters and treasures, and then the players exploring the dungeons, killing the shit out of those monsters, and taking the treasure. The sheer deadliness of 1st level D&D meant you had to sneak around avoid monsters sometimes. But ultimately, if you wanted to loot that dungeon properly (what with the gems in the bellies of giant spiders or wands suspended in gelatinous cubes) you better put everything to the sword.

Quote from: Benoist;645238Check my advice to build the mega-dungeon in my sig. This is going to be completed and shared outside of forums later on. In the meantime, I am working with Ernie Gygax to publish the dungeon that was run in the Dungeon Hobby Shop of TSR in Lake Geneva from 1977/78 on.

I know, and I admire that.

In addition to the dungeons, and how to build one, how about advice on how to run one — as sidebars or articles in the dungeon itself.

"Dungeoneering the Old School Way: How to Think Around Obstacles."

You don't need to write an entire clone. Just write great advice on how to run dungeons, and how to dungeon-delve. Advice for players, advice for GM's. Simple, clear, direct. Explain the fun of the play style, explain the basics. And include it in the dungeon.

If you love it, teach it.

:popcorn:

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645244I know, and I admire that.

In addition to the dungeons, and how to build one, how about advice on how to run one — as sidebars or articles in the dungeon itself.

"Dungeoneering the Old School Way: How to Think Around Obstacles."

There's going to be some of that in the introduction of the module, I think, with the caveat that edits and the like are going to modify the module's content and presentation as we move forward with the project. One of the aspects of the design involves making some of the implicit aspects of the environment that didn't appear on the original keys explicit in some way, shape or form. One instance of that is to talk about the various groups or factions of the dungeon and give ideas to the DM of their potential development thoughout the campaign. The wandering monster tables and the check frequencies are obviously a traditional part of that, but there are other ways in which this can be conveyed. The environment is meant to be dynamic, and though the written page by its very nature is an obstacle to conveying this sort of thing (since the key of a map for instance shows some static positions of this or that inhabitant or critter or feature in the dungeon by virtue of saying "this guy lives in this room" for instance), there are ways to convey this sort of thing which I think will assist the DM in making the environment his own, especially as the campaign unfolds. Hopefully, a combination of context, adventure opportunities, presentation, tools and design will help DMs do just that.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645244You don't need to write an entire clone. Just write great advice on how to run dungeons, and how to dungeon-delve. Advice for players, advice for GM's. Simple, clear, direct. Explain the fun of the play style, explain the basics. And include it in the dungeon.

The advice to build the mega-dungeon is meant to achieve this, though I went about it from the other way, in giving the advice and taking practical examples by building a dungeon environment right there in the advice to show how I'd do it, and what purpose it all serves. Once the advice will be completed, you'll hopefully have a set of clear (restructured, clarified etc, e.g. see the threads more as a draft than a final product, in terms of presentation and organization) guidelines and advice, with the additional perk of having a whole slew of fleshed out examples you could use in your own campaigns if you want to, including the Bandit level, the side-cut of the dungeon, the ideas brain-stormed for subsequent levels, the hex map around and all that.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645244If you love it, teach it.

We do agree fundamentally on this. Better yet, from my point of view: don't just teach it. Live it. Play it. Share it. That's what I do.

Quote from: Benoist;645264We do agree fundamentally on this. Better yet, from my point of view: don't just teach it. Live it. Play it. Share it. That's what I do.

That's all I meant to say. I'm not trying to say your preferred game is crap, or that you shouldn't play it.

Just that there's better things to focus on than complaining about New School. Like actually teaching Old School. (Not that you personally had a problem with that.)

Again, JMO.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;645266[T]here's better things to focus on than complaining about New School.

I agree. Note that the reason I commented here is to respond to the statement that "D&D was always about combat primarily" (which is a brain-dead canard). Not about bitching at post-2000 D&D version #39802312093.

Quote from: xech;645050Wargames are some kind of boardgame.

Everybody hear that? Wargames are boardgames.  Chainmail was a boardgame.  Hundreds of years of wargamers are all wrong, they were playing boardgames the whole time and just didn't know it.  Napolean? Fucking Euro Boardgamer.

You're an idiot Xech, and a troll.

You're wrong, I tell you!

WRONG!!!